The Speaker

The main idea conveyed in the first stanza is being desperate for freedom. In the poem, the speaker implies that the bird is desperate because it is able to see the beauty and nature of the outside world, but the bird is unable to experience it. The speaker describes the "wind [stirring] soft" and the river flowing "like a stream of glass." These images that the speaker creates makes it for the reader to believe that the bird is desperate to soar through the beauty the world has to offer and…

loud. The poem had a strong hook as I imagined the student “with blue hair and a tongued stud…” (1). I automatically assumed the speaker was a rebellious teenager who is privileged. I chuckled slightly when the author mentioned the words “full of shit” (5). I am not used to poets expressing themselves with swear words. I raised my eyebrows curiously when the speaker mentioned his father gushed “not blood but money…” (14). In addition, I rested my neck on my left hand to carefully understand…

congress cataloging in publication data. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London. 1979. (66) I should like to offer two conventional paraphrases of the poem, which I shall then suggest are inadequate. In the first, picked up by God, the speaker becomes His marksman: the mountains resound with the echoes of her shots; those bursts of gunfire are as “cordial” as the eruption of a volcano; with the threat of more gunfire, she guards him at night, imagining her power to be total.…

Although people are at liberty to say what they want, they do not to prevent harming their loved ones. This common dilemma comes to light in the poem “Legacies” by Nikki Giovanni. On one hand, some may argue that people should always speak the truth of how they feel or think to their loved ones. One the other hand, others might say that at times people should not say exactly what they think and speak to their loved ones. In her poem, “Legacies”, Nikki Giovanni maintains that “neither of them…

Painted around 1920 by German expressionist Martin Zeller, The Orator captures the fleeting moment in which the titular speaker basks in the climax of his great and powerful message. While he stands just to the left of center, his body takes up the entire length of the picture and covers the span of the entire left side. With his arms and legs spread wide on a raised orange-brown platform, he throws back his head toward to sky to summon a great miracle, message, or magic. Or perhaps he himself…

Speaker: The narrative voice in the text is Sarah Vowell. Vowell provides the reader with hints that she possesses a liberal quality that is contrary to judgements of her father whom seems to align with a conservative way of thinking. An example of this would be when Vowell quotes, “I’m not saying who was the Democrat or who was the Republican – my father or I – but I will tell you that I have never subscribed to Guns & Ammo, that I did not plaster the family vehicle with National Rifle…

This is apparent in Humanimal by Bhanu Kapil, in which the speaker’s experience in India focuses on the citizens of India, and their obsession with her ethnicity. At one moment in the collection, the speaker is persistently asked by a police escort, “Are you Indian?... Madam, are you France? Are you American? I think you are born in a different country” (Kapil 18). The question of ethnicity is reiterated several times because people find it important…

a strong run followed by a smoother one. 2. It is strange that this poem addresses a “you”? Is this “you” the audience? Or, do you think the speaker’s audience is wider? If the audience is wider, who is the audience or reader? - I think that the speaker is referring to all of us in general. The audience is every person who has achieved something gigantic in his life. The feeling that he has earned that prize is the acknowledgement that they get. I think that is better to die and leave ours…

In the poem “Lineage,” the speaker alludes to the fact that her ancestors were involved in slavery by using the line, “They moved through fields sowing seed.” (Ln 3). After specifying all of the hard tasks that her grandmothers have done, the speaker ends with the rhetorical question,“Why am I not as they?” (Ln 12). The theme expressed throughout the poem is that being strong means to stay positive through tough times. In the poem, Margaret writes, “They were full of sturdiness and singing.”…

For example, the author of this commercial obviously thinks that Charmin is the number one brand for toilet paper. That is all an opinion though because everybody has different tastes. Since the author believes that Charmin is the best toilet paper around, it must also mean that the author believes that it is the softest and longest lasting toilet paper. Another appeal that is used is pathos. The bears set off an emotional aspect that gets the audience to watch the commercial…